Small trucks will become America's future classics

I’m waiting for my Samurai to be worth more than my Ram.. it’s gonna happen sometime in the next 10yrs.. haha

My mom has a 2003 s10 with under 70k miles she loves. I sold it to her after I had it because I needed to carry kids and the darn thing didn’t have a tilt steering wheel which made it miserable for me to drive
 
So my '88 S10 4.3 V6, original owner, with 101,000 miles on it might be worth something someday? Maybe if I live long enough...
 
My T100 is a little larger but not like a full size pickup, even thought it has a full size bed. It drives like a piece of farm equipment to me. I think the steel on it must be much thicker than anything today. I guess we got used to them back in the day, but the new cars are so much slicker and easy to drive.
 
If vehicles like that actually sold well, they would make them. The people who want a bare bones vehicle are the tiniest sliver of car buyers. My Ram 1500 Classic had sat on the lot for a few months because it’s a barebones model… and even that has Bluetooth and a couple of USB ports.

I believe we are entering a period of severe economic downturn on the horizon. "Want" vs. "Need" is going to be the issue. People are way over-extending themselves on expensive vehicles with gadgets they don't "need" and mostly don't even "want." Also, the more complex, the more that breaks and needs expensive repairs.

Probably 9 out of 10 of the truck buyers today are paying way too much for way too much truck they'll never come close to needing. That's fine when the economy is good. But I think it's going to go south b/c there's no fundamentals propping it up.
 
I believe we are entering a period of severe economic downturn on the horizon. "Want" vs. "Need" is going to be the issue. People are way over-extending themselves on expensive vehicles with gadgets they don't "need" and mostly don't even "want." Also, the more complex, the more that breaks and needs expensive repairs.

Probably 9 out of 10 of the truck buyers today are paying way too much for way too much truck they'll never come close to needing. That's fine when the economy is good. But I think it's going to go south b/c there's no fundamentals propping it up.
A $15,000 MSRP brand new Hyundai Accent comes with Bluetooth and a 5” color touch screen. And I definitely wouldn’t say people don’t “want” the stuff, like I said my truck has the base spec radio and cloth seats and nobody but seemingly me wanted it… sales guy was very confused with my dislike of the 8.4” touch screen and leather seats in the 300 I had traded in.
 
A $15,000 MSRP brand new Hyundai Accent comes with Bluetooth and a 5” color touch screen. And I definitely wouldn’t say people don’t “want” the stuff, like I said my truck has the base spec radio and cloth seats and nobody but seemingly me wanted it… sales guy was very confused with my dislike of the 8.4” touch screen and leather seats in the 300 I had traded in.

And if consumers had the option to buy it with the $500+ touch screen and blue tooth, and $2000 leather seats, many would do so.

I'd absolutely consider a car with manual windows (never break, very easy and cheap to fix if they do), and not massive amounts of gadgets if it meant chopping many thousands off the price. These tech items are high margins items.
 
Rare=/=desirable or good

In the words of Matt Farah, edited to PG-13… You can’t uncrap a crap box.
That thought works also. Dysentery is also rare also but you dont see anyone desiring it.


Everyone desired that old hot rod look so the industry responded with the pt cruiser prowler hhr Ssr and others. Then everyone realized that desirable didn’t mean practical and there was a reason that design went out of favor and away they went.
 
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And if consumers had the option to buy it with the $500+ touch screen and blue tooth, and $2000 leather seats, many would do so.

I'd absolutely consider a car with manual windows (never break, very easy and cheap to fix if they do), and not massive amounts of gadgets if it meant chopping many thousands off the price. These tech items are high margins items.
You have to realize you’re the tiny minority, the average person “wants” a bit more and there is nothing wrong with that because not everything needs to be broken down to the lowest cost per mile. If those options sold well, the auto makers would have continued to offer them. And you’re not really saving “thousands of dollars” by eliminating them.

A 2021 Ram 1500 Classic regular cab has a MSRP of $30,550 which comes with manual windows and locks. Adding keyless entry, power/fold away/and heated mirrors, power windows, and power locks costs a whopping $735.
 
I'd absolutely consider a car with manual windows (never break, very easy and cheap to fix if they do

Either they never break or they do. The truth is they constantly broke. Handles come off, window gets jammed, mechanism gets tight so it took two hands to operate the crank. One hand to crank the other hand to lift or push down on the glass.

There is this fallacy that manual windows were perfect when they were far from it.
 
Demand for Rangers now is insane. I bought a 2011 this year and prices were going up month by month when I was looking. The new Rangers are much larger, basically full-sized.

Right now these old Rangers are very common. The main problem that takes them off the road, regardless of year, is rust, especially frame rust in areas that use liquid salt solution on roads in the winter. The one I bought had been undercoated and rustproofed, and it was a southeastern Virginia vehicle with little exposure to salt. That was the deal maker.

The Japanese compact trucks from before 1990 are scarce today and have been for years. Mechanically they were largely bulletproof, but many succumbed to bed rust because of the way the beds were constructed. Rust would begin around the seams. Cabs and frames were rust-prone over decades as well, but rust over a long time is true for lots of vehicles, not just trucks.

All the compact-truck manufacturers had diesel engines as options in the mid–1980s. Try to find one of those in any condition now; you can't.

What surprises me is how few people with compact trucks as personal vehicles (as opposed to business vehicles) got them undercoated and rustproofed when new. Another common sight is banged-up bodies. You expect this on a work truck, but some people beat up their personal trucks as well. That's hard to understand. Of course, hard driving, abuse, and lack of maintenance also kill lots of these trucks.

This stuff will make survivors in good condition collectible. I'm glad I bought my Ranger.
Yeah, I was seriously looking at 2011 2.3L Rangers, but good ones just sold right away. Carvana bought basically all of the available ones and jacked the prices up. CarMax didn't even really have any good trucks I think because Carvana was so aggressive about snatching them up.

I gave up and bought another old Explorer.
 
The problem is the small trucks cost almost as much as a full size truck and the gas mileage is not that much better. The main reason people buy the smaller trucks is because they cannot fit a full size truck in their garage. Remember the Ford Excursion?
 
Wonder what my 2005 Tacoma 4x4 TRD X-cab with 50K miles is worth. Might run it through Varoom or Carvana for giggles.
 
Was it Car and Driver that parked an 80's D150 and an early 2000's Dakota side by side and pointed out they were the same size? Defining min-truck is the hard part. I would consider Ford Ranger as the proper size for a mini truck. There were too many of those for them to be classic, and the mileage is as bad as a full size truck! That is always what kept me from a mini truck. If they got better fuel mileage, maybe, but I can respect the idea that it could happen.

Who would have thought a Jeep YJ, the undesirable Jeep, would have had it's moment in time? It has passed, and was very short, but they even had a moment of collectability.
 
So my '88 S10 4.3 V6, original owner, with 101,000 miles on it might be worth something someday? Maybe if I live long enough...
That reminds me. Older square-body Rangers are still around, obviously not in huge numbers, but the older '80s–early '90s Chevrolet S-10 pickups and S-10 (small) Blazers are relatively scarce now. These Chevys didn't seem to be particularly rust-prone, and they had decent drivetrains. Anyone have any ideas why so few are around?
 
I would consider Ford Ranger as the proper size for a mini truck. There were too many of those for them to be classic, and the mileage is as bad as a full size truck! That is always what kept me from a mini truck. If they got better fuel mileage, maybe, but I can respect the idea that it could happen.
Ford made millions of early Mustangs, and those still became collectible. I believe Ford made about 7 million Rangers over 30 years. Remember, lots of people treated cars in the '60s and light trucks later as disposable. That mentality is still out there. Lots of these were work trucks that were not well cared for either. So fewer than 7 million Rangers are still on the road, and even fewer are in decent condition.

The mileage really wasn't that bad. My 2011 Ranger with the SOHC 4.0 V-6 and 2WD automatic gets 20–23 mpg on the highway in actual use. The EPA rating was 20 mpg highway. The guys with the later 4–cylinders claim to get in the upper 20s on the highway.

For a true full-sized truck, mid–teens was as good as it got, and many got even worse fuel economy. My late dad's 1992 Silverado gets no more than 14 mpg (2WD, regular cab, 5.7 V-8/better known as 350, auto). Exception: downhill coasting with a tailwind. :D The 1972 Ford F-100 with 390 FE V-8 my stepfather had years ago eventually got down below 10 mpg because of engine and drivetrain wear.
 
A $15,000 MSRP brand new Hyundai Accent comes with Bluetooth and a 5” color touch screen. And I definitely wouldn’t say people don’t “want” the stuff, like I said my truck has the base spec radio and cloth seats and nobody but seemingly me wanted it… sales guy was very confused with my dislike of the 8.4” touch screen and leather seats in the 300 I had traded in.
To be fair, at $15,000 you’re missing out on a lot of other items that people forget about. It may have a lot of the “wants” that ppl expect, but some more “out of sight, out of mind needs” might be missing.

We just had a thread about how Hyundai/Kia still sells NEW vehicles in 2021 without an immobilizer. Resulting in a dramatic rise in thefts.
 
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